The Darkest Seduction (Lords of the Underworld #9)(80)
Author: Gena Showalter

“So many times you’ll lose respect for yourself.”

He laughed. He just couldn’t help himself. He was…happy. She was teasing him, as if they were friends. They were friends. “I wasn’t going to sleep with the goddess,” he said. “I swear to you. Never will I sleep with that female.”

She placed a kiss just above his heart. “Don’t do that. Don’t promise things like that. Because even as jealous as I was, and yes, I’m freely admitting to a stalkerlike rage, I would rather you slept with a thousand like her than weaken and die.”

His chest got tight. Gently he pulled out of her sweet, sweet body, and they both moaned at the loss. He stripped her, stripped himself, then placed his gun on the nightstand beside the bed, and his blade under his pillow. Safety taken care of, he went right back to cuddling Sienna into his side. First, though, he gave her ni**les a Daddy’s back kiss.

“We’re going to talk about that, and about what you were so upset about, because I know there’s more to it than the goddess,” he said. “In a few minutes. Right now, I want to say a few things, and then I want you to tell me something about you. I want to know you better.” In all ways.

They weren’t leaving this bed until he’d seen her brain naked, too, and that was that.

“O-kay.”

“Susan Dille,” he said. “I cared for her. I wanted something to work with her, but I was growing weak. Finally I caved and slept with someone else. I was miserable, she found out, and things only got worse from there. I don’t want that with you.”

“What makes me so different?” she whispered. “I mean, how can you be with me more than once?”

“I’ve wondered about that myself, and I think it’s because my desire for you is more powerful than my demon.”

“That’s… Oh, Paris. That’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Good. Now it’s your turn for a confession. Start talking.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

“I, WELL… HMM,” Sienna said.

“Come on, baby.” Paris combed his fingers through her hair. “Look past my terrible personality and hideous looks and throw me a bone. Teach me how to woo you properly.”

She snorted. “I’d argue the hideous looks part.”

“But not the terrible personality? Ouch. That hurts, baby.”

Her next snort was half-bathed in laughter. “Well, this won’t teach you anything but my stupidity. Once I tried to spray tan my freckles away and ended up looking like a diseased carrot.”

“I adore your freckles, and my favorite fantasy involves licking every single one of them. More secrets, though. I want more.” Was so hungry for them.

A heavy pause, and when she next spoke, she’d lost her air of playfulness. “The guy I was going to marry, well, I was going to have his baby, but halfway through—” a shudder rocked her “—well, I lost her. My baby girl. Afterward I just sort of broke down and my fiancée left. I was moved to a different division of the Hunters’ enterprise.”

“Oh, Sienna, oh, baby, I’m so sorry.”

Tears filled her eyes, quickly masked. “I recovered.”

No one ever recovered fully from that kind of loss.

“I never allow myself to think of her. That’s probably unhealthy, but…”

“But it’s how you survive. What did you name her?” He knew she’d given the little girl a name.

Another pause, then a hesitant, “Rebecca Skye.”

He remembered when she asked him if he even wanted to have kids. Had she ever wanted to have another? Probably. The loss would have left a wound inside her, one that would never fully heal. He knew that kind of loss well. But pregnancy wasn’t a possibility for the undead. Still, he wondered if adoption was. Perhaps she could take in one of the kids with unexplained abilities Anya had hidden around the world to save them from Hunters. Sienna would make an amazing mother, protective, loving, fierce.

“She’s in heaven, I think. Not Cronus’s heaven, or this heaven, or wherever we are, and not Zacharel’s heaven, either. I’ve never told anyone this, but when I died, I knew there was someplace wonderful to spend eternity, as well as someplace terrible. Maybe Cronus is my personal hell, my something terrible, but Rebecca is in that other place, that far better place, where someone far better than Cronus or Zacharel’s Deity rules. And now I want to talk about something else. Something light.”

Light. He could give her light, even though he had a thousand questions about this “better place” and this “better” ruler, and her suffering and her dreams. “I enjoy watching romantic comedies, action adventures, horror, whatever. Anything but subtitles. That artsy crap is lame.” He cupped the sweetest ass on the planet and found himself hard all over again.

“Tell me more.” With a voice full of rasp, she said, “I want to know about you, too.”

“I’ll tell you anything you want to know.” And he meant that.

“You and your friends…you’re really close.”

Those same friends would have told him she had a hankering for information so that she could use it against him. Paris knew better. “We were created together. We’re family.”

“Created?”

“Yeah. Zeus made us from the blood of his best warriors, steel, baser instincts, things like that.”

“So you have no mother or father?”

“Nope.”

“I’m sorry. Blood family isn’t always hearts and flowers, but there’s comfort there. I’m sorry you didn’t have that.”

“Just made me that much closer to my boys, but I did sometimes wonder what it would have been like. Then I’d think about what I did have, men who would die for me, and I would realize I’ve got everything I need.”

“Having someone who is willing to die for you is rare. And several someones? Awesome.”

“Yes. It is.”

“I’m glad you have that. It’s better than family.”

How wistful she sounded. “You don’t?”

“No. Never.”

And didn’t that just break his heart. I might die for her, he thought. Might throw myself in front of a sword for her. “Now I’m the one who’s sorry. I mean, you died for me, but I haven’t—” Oh, damn. Wrong words. He expected her to tense, waited for the mood to shatter.